AI Could Overtake Humans in 5 Years, Says Elon Musk, Whose ‘Top Concern’ is Google-Owned DeepMind – International Business Times, Singapore Edition

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Elon Musk tweeted that Teslas self-driving cars would cost more after July

Artificial Intelligence is the future of this world and a perfect example of technological development. But the tech billionaire Elon Musk warns the world about the dark side of it as there is a strong possibility that AI will take over humans within the next five years.

The CEO of SpaceX and the co-founder of the AI research lab OpemAI has been sounding the alarm bells against the rising threat of advanced AI over the past few years.

As reported by The New York Times, Musk said: "My assessment about why AI is overlooked by very smart people is that very smart people do not think a computer can ever be as smart as they are. And this is hubris and obviously false."

The billionaire technology entrepreneur claimed that the experience he gathered while working with different types of AI at Tesla, has given him the confidence to claim that the world is heading toward a situation where AI is "vastly smarter than humans." Musk said that the time frame is probably less than five years now, but it doesn't mean that "everything goes to hell in five years. It just means that things get unstable or weird."

'Top Concern'

Almost four years ago the Tesla CEO sounded an alarm saying that humans could become the equivalent of "house cats" considering the rise of the AI rulers. Now it looks like his point of view about AI has not changed at all, as recently he said that the highly secretive London research lab DeepMindrun by Demis Hassabisis Musk's "top concern" when it comes to AI technology. It was acquired by Google in 2014 for a reported $600 million.

"Just the nature of the AI that they're building is one that crushes all humans at all games," Musk said adding that "I mean, it's basically the plotline in 'WarGames'"a 1983 movie, in which a teenager unintentionally connects to an AI-controlled government supercomputer that used to run war simulations. Going with the background of the movie, after starting a game called "Global Thermonuclear War," the teen leads the computer to activate the country's nuclear arsenal in response to his simulated threat as the Soviet Union.

In 2017, at the Beneficial AI conference, Musk and Hassabis sat on a panel"Superintelligence: Science or Fiction?" -- along with Oxford professor and Superintelligence author Nick Bostrom, Skype cofounder Jaan Tallinn, Google engineering director Ray Kurzweil and many other experts from the tech industry. At the start of the panel, everyone agreed that some form of superintelligence is possible. When Musk was asked whether it will actually happen, he said 'yes.'

The 49-year-old South African tech billionaire is currently busy bringing out new advancements via Neuralinka startup founded in 2016 to develop "ultra-high bandwidth brain-machine interface." But his stand on AI remains the same.

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AI Could Overtake Humans in 5 Years, Says Elon Musk, Whose 'Top Concern' is Google-Owned DeepMind - International Business Times, Singapore Edition

The Climate Crisis Demands New Ways of Thinking from Climate Scientists – Resilience

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The climate crisis demands new ways of thinking scientists should be first to admit failure and move on.

A universal policy failure

Inarguably, one of the most significant and long-lasting legacies of the 50-year old Apollo programme was the life-changing experience its astronauts had upon viewing the earth from the vantage point of another celestial body. The vision they described of its fragile and delicate beauty is all the more striking and poignant at this moment in climate emergency.

We, that is to say, humanity has this beautiful planet, home now to 7 billion people with nowhere else to go, and are running a reckless experiment, that has taken the Earth system right out of the mode of operation it has been running in for millions of years. Climate and earth scientists should be and should have been the first to see the utter insanity of this hellishly dangerous undertaking.

But in some strange way, and despite the warnings over the past decades of many individuals such as Roger Revelle, Jim Hansen, Kevin Anderson, to name but a few, it appears the latest generation of protesters, from Fridays for Future to Extinction Rebellion have done far more to hammer home the real message that climate crisis cannot be taken lightly, and is urgently and ultimately a most horrifying question of life and death. We do not know when it will happen and who will be hit first, but one thing is certain: if we do not change course quickly, things can get very nasty indeed.

I am not advocating sending climate researchers to space, or holding the next climate summit on the surface of the moon not least for the tremendous CO2emissions that would entail. But after 27 years as a climate and Earth scientist, I believe that it is my own profession that most urgently needs to take a huge step back and view the whole planetary picture from a new perspective. After decades of climate system research much of it coordinated with a political process to mitigate climate change, global CO2emissions keep rising in a quasi-exponential fashion (see Figure).1As far as the atmosphere is concerned, there has been no action on climate change whatsoever. If we were some kind of super bug that has found a way of rapidly decomposing deep carbon reserves, the picture would not alter in the slightest. Any extra-planetary observer of the current crisis with advanced remote sensing capabilities would be compelled to conclude there is no intelligent life on Earth.

Climate science responsibilities

How and in what way have we as scientists contributed to this disastrous failure of climate policy? The first point indicates scientific conservatism and has been noted before by many.2It is our job as scientists to question new theories to make sure they hold up. So, we demand to know how certain we are this is true. But what we do not ask is if we can be sure this effect will never happen. This latter is how anyone is trained to think in an emergency situation.3The best-known example is probably the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Changes (IPCC) decision to explicitly exclude ice sheet melt from its Fifth Assessment Reports estimate of future sea-level rise. It is now widely believed that there is a substantial risk of much more rapid change, mainly due to the possible collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.4

The second has to do with our holding on to illusions, for fear of inciting panic. The IPCCs Special Report on 1.5 degrees warming gives a remaining emissions budget as of 1 January 2018 of 320 billion tonnes (Gt) of CO2, when accounting for some Earth system feedbacks.5Using the latest estimate for 2018,1and a continuing exponential rise in emissions in accordance with the last 170 years,6I conclude that the budget given by the IPCC will be exhausted at the beginning of 2025. Past investment in fossil-fuel and energy infrastructure alone has been estimated to commit the world to emitting 658 Gt CO2, as of 2018.7Given that the approach of climate policy has been to address fossil-fuel emissions at the demand and not the supply end,8and that the negative emissions technologies that dominate the IPCCs below 1.5 degree warming scenarios are unproven,9it is extremely unlikely the Paris Agreements goal will be met.10But even the publications outlining the most dramatic scenarios scientific or popular never seem to say it is too late.

Another way we, as scientists, have contributed to the crisis concerns the excessive rationalisation of a threat. In other words we switch off common sense and produce scientific results borne of idealized models be they mathematical or intellectual. All of us are probably well apprised of the knowledge that there is no decisive and radical action on climate change no car free Sundays as enforced during the 1980s oil crisis (Im old enough to remember!), no massive push towards public transport, no willingness to stop the continuing rise in air travel, or awareness of the enormous energy consumption of the internet.11The Climate Action Tracker initiative estimates that given existing pledges, the world is heading towards 3 degrees of warming.12As citizens we all know the difference between a politicians words and deeds and we are all painfully aware of recent changes in the geopolitical landscape, implying a very real risk of a 4 or higher degree of warming.13And yet, the IPCCs various assessment reports have repeatedly relied on highly idealized so-called integrated models that know and admit nothing of these things, and therefore be easily bent to produce results that fly in the face of common logic.14In our official model, this purportedly objective approach is the very one implemented to inform policy makers.

Finally, Paul Watzlawicks famous dictum that we cannot not communicate is also true for us climate scientists, even if we do not want to hear it. By going on with our daily routines and not rebelling filling in another grant application for looking at yet another tiny detail of the complex web of cause and effect that is the planetary climate system, following the demands of a funding system that might serve the interests of politicians as much as those of humanity we send out a powerful message that everything is under control. The way the IPCCs assessments are structured makes it very clear that regarding climate change, we are dealing first of all with a physical problem (Working Group 1) that has impacts on the natural world and societies (Working Group 2), that have to be dealt with by technical solutions (Working Group 3)15. An alternative point of view may be simply expressed by saying we are dealing with the mundane problem of good housekeeping the original meaning of the Greek word economy. Climate change, biodiversity loss, overfishing and air pollution could also just be symptoms of a more fundamental problem: that the word economy has assumed a different meaning from its origin, and that we cannot imagine a functioning economy without never ending growth supported by unlimited resources.16

A way out

The fact that we have been so stunningly unable to react to climate change may have to do with a failure to see precisely where the problem really resides and that the community of climate scientists have falsely assumed the position of superior expertise, where in fact it should have belonged to social anthropologists, historians, psychologists, and political and social activists. If this is so, it would explain the remarkable success of the latest protest movement, and the failure of the science and policy establishment.

If we take this point of view on board for a moment, it becomes clear where the way out of the crisis can be found at least in principle: acceptance of our collective failure, humility on the part of the experts, and immediate action from the human side of the problem. Most of the funding so far plunged into expert meetings, science conferences, computer resources, expeditions and lab work should now go towards building social capital and political trust, the facilitation of pertinent, open debate, and the establishment of global democratic institutions with capacity to deal with a global problem that so far has been impossible to tackle.

To read an interview of Dr Knorr by the founder of IFLAS, Professor Jem Bendell, see here.

References

1See figure. Emissions from Global Carbon Project until 2017 for energy and cement production plus land use change, 2018 using preliminary estimate by LeQur et al.,Earth System Science Data, 10, 1-54, 2018, DOI: 10.5194/essd-10-2141-2018. 2018 land use emissions assumed unchanged against previous year.

2For example Brysse, K. et al.Climate change prediction: Erring on the side of least drama? Global Environmental Change 23 (2013) 327337, or Discerning Experts, Oppenheimer et al. 2019,https://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/D/bo33765378.html

3Peacock K. A.A Different Kind of Rigor: What Climate Scientists Can Learn from Emergency Room Doctors. Ethics, Policy & Environment 21, 194-214, 2018.

4Bamber J. L. et al.Ice sheet contributions to future sea-level rise from structured expert judgment, Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. 116,11,195-11,200, 2019.https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1817205116

5CO2released through permafrost melt and methane released by wetlands.

6The rise of 1.65% per year is the one that corresponds to the long-term trend as shown in the figure. However, since 1945 emissions from fossil-fuel burning have been rising much faster for most of the time, see Hansen J. et al.Assessing Dangerous Climate Change: Required Reduction of Carbon Emissions to Protect Young People, Future Generations and Nature, PLoS ONE 8, e81648, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0081648, 2013.

7Tong, D. et al., Committed emissions from existing energy infrastructure jeopardize 1.5 C climate target, Nature 572, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-019-1364-3, 2019.

8Denniss, R. and Green, R. Cutting with both arms of the scissors: the economic and political case for restrictive supply-side climate policies, Climatic Change 150:7387 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-018-2162-x, 2018.

9Fuss S. et al., Betting on negative emissions, Nat. Clim. Change 4, 850-853, 2014. Anderson, K., Duality in climate science, Nat. Geosci. 8, 898-900, 2015.

10The IPCCs estimate notably excludes a range of positive Earth system feedbacks that could lead to more warming. For a more complete list of Earth system feedbacks see e.g. Steffen W. et al., Trajectories of the Earth System in the Anthropocene, Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci, 115, 8,252-8,259, http://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1810141115, 2018.

11Heinberg, R. and Fridley, D. Our Renewable Future. Island Press, 2016.

12https://climateactiontracker.org/global/cat-thermometer/S

13Special issue of Phil. Trans. Royal Soc. A, Four degrees and beyond: the potential for a global temperature increase of four degrees and its implications Vol. 269, 2011.

14This refers in particular to Chapter 2 of the IPCC 1.5-degree Special Report. Figure 2.4 shows a range of socio-economic scenarios, of which most seem to comply with the constraint that climate change is limited to less than 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels. Figure 2.5 then shows that a large number of them imply massive negative carbon emissions during the period, to the amount of a quarter of half the current positive emissions. I assert here that to think our willingness to engage in altruistic behaviour on such an absolutely massive scale,one that would reach levels of carbon flux comparable to the much easier activity of burning fossil fuels driven by selfish desire for convenience is truly and utterly in defiance of common sense.

15For a wider discussion of the implications of the General Circulation Model view of the climate problem see Demeritt, D., The construction of global warming and the politics of science,Ann. Assoc. American Geographers, 91, 307337, 2001.

16Meadows, D., Randers, D., and Meadows, D., The limits to growth the 30-year update. Earthscan, London, New York, 2012.

Acknowledgments

The author thanks James Rumball ([emailprotected]) for suggestions and copy editing.

Teaser image credit: By NASA/Apollo 17 crew; taken by either Harrison Schmitt or Ron Evans https://web.archive.org/web/20160112123725/http://grin.hq.nasa.gov/ABSTRACTS/GPN-2000-001138.html (image link); see also https://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_329.html, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=43894484

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The Climate Crisis Demands New Ways of Thinking from Climate Scientists - Resilience

How to save Lebanon from looming hyperinflation – The National

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In June 2020, Lebanons inflation rate was 20 per cent, month-on-month. In other words, prices in the country were, on average, 20 per cent more than they were a month before. Compared to a year earlier, in June 2019, they had nearly doubled.

Lebanon is well on its way to hyperinflation when prices of goods and services change daily, and rise by more than 50 per cent in a month.

Hyperinflation is most commonly associated with countries like Venezuela and Zimbabwe, which this year have seen annual inflation rates of 15,000 per cent and 319 per cent, respectively. Lebanon is set to join their league; food inflation surged by 108.9 per cent during the first half of 2020.

When hyperinflation takes hold, consumers start to behave in very unusual ways. Goods are stockpiled, leading to increased shortages. As the money in someones pocket loses its worth, people start to barter for goods.

What characterises countries with high inflation and hyperinflation? They have a sharp acceleration in growth of the money supply in order to finance unsustainable overspending; high levels of government debt; political instability; restrictions on payments and other transactions and a rapid breakdown in socio-economic conditions and the rule of law. Usually, these traits are associated with endemic corruption.

Lebanon fulfils all of the conditions. Absent immediate economic and financial reforms, the country is heading to hyperinflation and a further collapse of its currency.

How and why did this happen?

Lebanon is in the throes of an accelerating meltdown. Unsustainable economic policies and an overvalued exchange rate pegged to the US dollar have led to persistent deficits. Consequently, public debt in 2020 is more than 184 per cent of GDP the third highest ratio in the world.

The trigger to the banking and financial crisis was a series of policy errors starting with an unwarranted closure of banks in October 2019, supposedly in connection with political protests against government ineffectiveness and corruption. Never before whether in the darkest hours of Lebanons civil war (1975-1990), during Israeli invasions or other political turmoil have banks been closed or payments suspended.

More than a third of Lebanese are unemployed and poverty rates exceed 50 per cent

The bank closures led to an immediate loss of trust in the entire banking system. They were accompanied by informal controls on foreign currency transactions, foreign exchange licensing, the freezing of deposits and other payment restrictions to protect the dwindling reserves of Lebanons central bank. All of this generated a sharp liquidity and credit squeeze and the emergence of a system of multiple exchange rates, resulting in a further loss of confidence in the monetary system and the Lebanese pound.

Multiple exchange rates are particularly nefarious. They create distortions in markets, encourage rent seeking (when someone gains wealth without producing real value) and create new opportunities for cronyism and corruption. Compounded by the Covid-19 lockdown, the result has been a sharp 20 per cent contraction in economic activity, consumption and investment and surging bankruptcies. Lebanon is experiencing rapidly rising unemployment (over 35 per cent) and poverty rates exceeding 50 per cent of the population.

With government revenues declining, growing budget deficits are increasingly financed by the Lebanese central bank (BDL), leading to the accelerating inflation. The next phase will be a cost-of-living adjustment for the public sector, more monetary financing and inflation: an impoverishing vicious circle!

We are witnessing the bursting of a Ponzi scheme engineered by the BDL, starting in 2016 with a massive bailout of the banks, equivalent to about 12.6 per cent of GDP. To protect an overvalued pound and finance the government, the BDL started borrowing at ever-higher interest rates, through so-called financial engineering schemes. These evolved into a cycle of additional borrowing to pay maturing debt and debt service, until confidence evaporated and reserves were exhausted.

By 2020, the BDL was unable to honour its foreign currency obligations and Lebanon defaulted on its March 2020 Eurobond, seeking to restructure its domestic and foreign debt. The resulting losses of the BDL exceeded $50 billion, equivalent to the entire countrys GDP that year. It was a historically unprecedented loss by any central bank in the world.

With the core of the banking system, the BDL, unable to repay banks deposits, the banks froze payments to depositors. The banking and financial system imploded.

As part of Lebanons negotiations with the IMF to resolve the situation, the government of Prime Minister Hassan Diab prepared a financial recovery plan that comprises fiscal, banking and structural reforms. However, despite the deep and multiple crises, there has been no attempt at fiscal or monetary reform.

In effect, Mr Diabs government and Riad Salameh, the head of the central bank, are deliberately implementing a policy of imposing an inflation tax and an illegal Lirafication: a forced conversion of foreign currency deposits into Lebanese pounds in order to achieve internal real deflation.

The objective is to impose a domestic solution and preclude an IMF programme and associated reforms. The inflation tax and Lirafication reduce real incomes and financial wealth. The sharp reduction in real income and the sharp depreciation of the pound are leading to a massive contraction of imports, reducing the current account deficit to protect the remaining international reserves. Lebanon is being sacrificed to a failed exchange rate and incompetent monetary and government policies.

What policy measures can be implemented to rescue Lebanon? Taming inflation and exchange rate collapse requires a credible, sustainable macroeconomic policy anchor to reduce the prevailing extreme policy uncertainty.

Here are four measures that would help:

First, a Capital Control Act should be passed immediately, replacing the informal controls in place since October 2019 with more transparent and effective controls to stem the continuing outflow of capital and help stabilise the exchange rate. This would restore a modicum of confidence in the monetary systems and the rule of law, as well as the flow of capital and remittances.

Second is fiscal reform. It is time to bite the bullet and eliminate wasteful public spending. Start by reform of the power sector and raising the prices of subsidised commodities and services, like fuel and electricity. This would also stop smuggling of fuel and other goods into sanctions-laden Syria, which is draining Lebanons reserves. Subsidies should be cut in conjunction with the establishment of a social safety net and targeted aid.

These immediate reforms should be followed by broader measures including improving revenue collection, reforming public procurement (a major source of corruption), creating a National Wealth Fund to incorporate and reform state commercial assets, reducing the bloated size of the public sector, reforming public pension schemes and introducing a credible fiscal rule.

Third, unify exchange rates and move a to flexible exchange rate regime. The failed exchange rate regime has contributed to large current account deficits, hurt export-oriented sectors, and forced the central bank to maintain high interest rates leading to a crowding-out of the private sector. Monetary policy stability also requires that the BDL should be restructured and stop financing government deficits and wasteful and expensive quasi-fiscal operations, such as subsidising real estate investment.

Fourth, accelerate negotiations with the IMF and agree to a programme that sets wide-ranging conditions on policy reform. Absent an IMF programme, the international community, the GCC, EU and other countries that have assisted Lebanon previously will not come to its rescue.

Lebanon is at the edge of the abyss. Absent deep and immediate policy reforms, it is heading for a lost decade, with mass migration, social and political unrest and violence. If nothing is done, it will become "Libazuela".

Nasser Saidi is a former Lebanese economy minister and first vice-governor of the Central Bank of Lebanon

Updated: August 3, 2020 11:16 AM

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How to save Lebanon from looming hyperinflation - The National

What’s Modern About Modern Strategy? – War on the Rocks

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Editors Note: This article is the introductory essay for Vol. 3, Iss. 3 of theTexas National Security Review. Please check it out the volumehere.

As the world sunk deeper into a deadly global conflagration in 1941, Princeton University professor Edward Meade Earle gathered a group of eminent scholars to discuss the history and practice of military strategy. The seminar eventually produced a landmark collection of essays, Makers of Modern Strategy: Military Thought from Machiavelli to Hitler. The book, which was updated in 1986 by Peter Paret, quickly became a classic.

Three things in particular are notable about the 1943 volume, which included some of the best military and political historians working in the middle part of the 20th century. First is the focus on individuals: leaders such as Frederick the Great and thinkers like naval strategist Alfred Thayer Mahan. The second is an understanding that conflict had become all-encompassing, dominating every aspect of society. Given the total mobilization of the World War II, when every element of the economy, political system, and even information was tightly controlled and exploited by the state, this frightening perspective was understandable: When war comes it dominates our lives. Third, the essays focus on the physical elements of war: the movement, clash, and material and human destruction between massed groups of men and machines fighting to destroy each other. Certain themes appear over and over again, across centuries, national, and ideological lines:

Among these are the concept of lightning war and the battle of annihilation; the war of maneuver vs. the war of position; the relationship between war and social institutions and between economic strength and military power; psychology and morale as weapons of war; the role of discipline in the army; the question of the professional army vs. the militia.

The outstanding articles in this issue have caused me to reflect upon what such a volume might look like today (an important task my esteemed Kissinger Center colleague Hal Brands is actually pursuing). Would these three themes the role of individuals and leaders, the complete socio-economic mobilization by the nation-state to prosecute war, and the place of kinetic, physical conflict serve as the organizing principles for a third edition of Makers of Modern Strategy? Or do we need to focus on different factors and forces that better reflect the nature of contemporary and future conflict?

In some ways, the issues today are quite similar as a commentator on the original volume pointed out, the goal of the book was to reflect upon the art of controlling and utilizing the resources of a nation or a coalition of nations, to promote and secure their interests against enemies, actual, potential, or presumed. This is as good a definition of grand strategy as any, and is as applicable today as it was in 1943. The interests of key states, however, and the means of securing those interests, appear quite different in 2020 than in 1943. Instead of reflections on the best ways to deploy battleships or tanks, the latest analyses of grand strategy focus on new tools which are often non-kinetic, such as cyber-weapons and economic warfare.

The first big shift in the realities of war occurred only a few years after Makers of Modern Strategy appeared, when the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. The ability to deliver unimaginable destruction in such a short period and from long distances transformed the use of force. As Bernard Brodie pointed out, Thus far the chief purpose of our military establishment has been to win wars. From now on its chief purpose must be to avert them. For the next eight decades, the strategy of deterrence using weapons to prevent events like invasion, conquest, or coercion became the key focus. While counter-intuitive and often terrifying, a renaissance in strategy emerged, centered upon sophisticated analyses of what kinds of weapons, arrayed in what strategies and deployments, would best ensure they were never used. This strategic revolution also generated the intellectual architecture and policy elements for another novel form of strategy: negotiated bilateral and multilateral arms control. Such agreements sought to decrease the chance for the kind of miscalculation and misperception that some believed could lead to an unwanted war. These strategies appeared to play a key role in the peaceful end of the Cold War and the absence of great power war ever since.

There are reasons to wonder whether our period of new technological transformation and great power rivalry is challenging the underpinnings of the decades-long legacy of deterrence and arms control. Luis Simon and Alexander Lanozka, for example, highlight the consequences that new precision-guided missiles have had on the strategic environment, particularly in northeastern Europe. These precision strike weapons, deployed as part of an anti-access/area denial strategy, often blur the line between conventional and nuclear environments. The collapse of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty revealed how our legacy arms control concepts and institutions are poorly adapted to this new world. Given how exposed Baltic members in NATO are to Russian power, this confused environment could be dangerous.

It is important to recall that much of the post-1945 revolution in military strategy was based upon the clear distinction between nuclear and non-nuclear forces. A considerable amount of intellectual energy was expended trying to figure out whether and in what ways conflict could still take place under the nuclear shadow, and under what circumstances either planned or inadvertent a conventional war might escalate into a nuclear conflict. Rebecca Hersman convincingly demonstrates that the linear model of escalation that shaped strategy throughout most of the nuclear age no longer captures the complex and non-linear dynamics of an international system marked by profound technological change, increased security competition, and a fraying global order. Hersman creatively deploys a metaphor from physics to highlight what she labels wormhole escalation. Her analysis captures a terrifying and underappreciated irony that the ability of states (and non-state actors) to use novel, non-kinetic, and sub-strategic tools such as information warfare, cyber attacks, and economic coercion to target an adversarys strategic interests actually increases the dangers of a nuclear crisis through strange, uncharted paths. Asymmetric capabilities may encourage higher risk, or simply blur risk and increase the fog of war, potentially producing disastrous outcomes. Hersmans truly original analysis is precisely the kind of chapter one that would hope to find in a new Makers of Modern Strategy.

Similar challenges for strategists exist in the world of cyber conflict. Michael N. Schmitt argues that the portrayal of cyberspace as the new Wild West, a completely unregulated, anything-goes domain, is untrue. The reality is more mixed, though promising. Cyberspace presents a dilemma: States and societies are relying on it more for critical economic, political, and security functions, yet cyber attacks and malfeasance are on the rise. International law, according to Schmitt, increasingly provides an important if imperfect tool to help states establish and solidify norms, express their interests and preferences, and regulate the most harmful activities.

In the past, economics was largely seen as a means to support a successful military strategy. The state with the largest industrial economy, that could produce the most steel, coal, and electricity, and that could convert those assets into weapons that supported military forces, was the one that could best prevail in war. For David H. McCormick,Charles E. Luftig, andJames M. Cunningham, economics is no longer simply about the means to support war. Economic dominance is the goal of great-power competition, and economic tools the best means to achieve that end. In other words, future great-power competition is as likely to occur over the development of new technologies, the crafting of international economic institutions and norms, and reserve currency status. This is different from the recent past, when global economic exchange was seen purely through the lens of the laws of comparative advantage and mutual gain. The idea that when China sold cheap goods to the United States, citizens in both countries benefitted, is seen as increasingly suspect. McCormick et al believe that at least some portions of economic activity need to be understood through the zero-sum approach of traditional security and geopolitical competition. In their view, China and Russia, with their strategic investments in key technologies and industries, are well ahead of the United States in the field of state-driven economic strategy. The article lays out a series of concrete measures the United States could take, ones that fall short of the kind of national economic planning that America eschews but do coordinate and encourage targeted private sector activity in strategic industries.

Needless to say, we need rigorous scholarly and analytical tools to identify, measure, and evaluate these changes. Jessica D. Blankshain and Andrew L. Stigler provide a very useful primer on the tools available to social scientists, from game theory to statistical analysis to historical case studies. We will need these and other tools to make sense of the complex, ever changing world of national and international security.

Has war changed since Earle, Gordon Craig, Hajo Halborn, Robert Roswell Palmer, and others offered their reflections on the nature of military strategy, and if so, in what ways? The first question would involve who or what constitutes the makers of modern strategy. While there are certainly great strategic thinkers and leaders ranging from several American presidents to Chinas President Xi Jinping have mattered enormously one is struck by the importance of other variables shaping the security environment. Technology, the role of ideology, demographics, the move to a post-industrial, globalized economy: The tectonic, intensifying structural forces shaping world order in recent decades seem to have outpaced both our ability to conceptualize international security and to translate these ideas into policies.

This leads to the second theme of the 1943 volume the total mobilization by the nation-state of society for war. As dangerous as the world has been since 1945, the place that war plays in most modern countries has decreased substantially. In 1960, 6 percent of global GDP was spent on military spending. By 2017, it was down to 2 percent. Beyond the economic side, the number of people involved in state-driven military enterprises has fallen as armies and navies have shrunk. Even in the United States, which possesses far and away the worlds most powerful military, in 2019 only spent 3.4 percent of its GDP. Only 0.4 percent of the total population is active duty military. The historians Paul Kennedy and William McNeill both argued that the so-called rise of the modern West was driven by fierce security competition and the constant prevalence of war in Europe. War and geopolitical competition drove any number of other profound changes, from the rise of the modern bureaucratic state, mass education, literacy, public health, international finance, and technology. The connection between war and new technological developments, or war and socio-economic change, seems far more tenuous today than in the past. In 2020, Charles Tillys observation that war made the state and the state made war tells us less than it once did.

Does this mean the kind of great power wars that plagued the world in earlier centuries has abated for good? Scholars such as Bear F. Braumoeller have cautioned against believing that either human nature or fierce international competition have fundamentally changed. As the growing rivalry between the United States and China reveals, great-power competition has not disappeared. Will these rivalries, however, take different forms? Will the age of kinetic, force-on-force, army-on-army battles, highlighted by battleships and tanks, be replaced by economic statecraft, battles in space and in the cyber world, autonomous weapons, and robots? The digital revolution, combined with the decreasing value of land, shifting demographics, and changing socio-economics, all under the nuclear shadow, does make the idea of great power war somewhat unthinkable. And yet.

Scanning the globe, one sees any number of places where traditional, physical military force retains its threat, as the recent deadly clash between China and India over the line of control reveals. Can we really rule out a Russian invasion of Estonia, or a move by China to take Taiwan by force? And could we rule out a fierce military response by the United States and others? Such a scenario might make the three themes leaders, total mobilization, and physical, material force dangerously relevant again. Obviously, these are scenarios we should work hard to prevent from occurring, and their dire potential consequences highlight the continuing importance that deterrence and statecraft play in the world. To that end, let us hope the third edition of Makers of Modern Strategy is written in conditions similar to what we find today, and not the terrifying world faced by Earle and his colleagues in 1943.

Francis J. Gavinis the chair of the editorial board of theTexas National Security Review. He is the Giovanni Agnelli Distinguished Professor and the inaugural director of the Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global Affairs at SAIS-Johns Hopkins University.His writings includeGold, Dollars, and Power: The Politics of International Monetary Relations, 19581971(University of North Carolina Press, 2004) andNuclear Statecraft: History and Strategy in Americas Atomic Age(Cornell University Press, 2012). His latest book isNuclear Weapons and American Grand Strategy(Brookings Institution Press, 2020).

Image: U.S. Air Force (Photo by Tech. Sgt. Gregory Brook)

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What's Modern About Modern Strategy? - War on the Rocks

How Partially Nationalizing the Highways Turned Italy Into Another Venezuela – Jacobin magazine

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A specter is haunting Italys highways: the specter of Chavismo. Highways: the Venezuelan model has won, claimed journalist Nicola Porro in a video addressed to his 700,000 Facebook and 400,000 Twitter followers. Porro is a famous face on Silvio Berlusconis Mediaset TV stations and deputy editor of the tycoons newspaper Il Giornale; and within just hours, his talk of Venezuela had been adopted by dozens of right-wing commentators, but also a large part of the liberal establishment.

Such fury was not exactly well-grounded. Earlier in July, Giuseppe Contes government decided to take back a 33 percent public share in the company that manages Italys highways, twenty years after it was privatized. This was perhaps a rather tepid move, given the appalling in recent years, deadly neglect of the highways under private management. Yet comparisons with Hugo Chvez and Nicols Maduro abounded in national media, presenting Contes move as extreme and illegitimate.

His attackers drew on tropes already well-established in European and US public discourse, resorting to Cold War anti-communism even three decades since the fall of the Eastern Bloc. Faced with the slightest deviation from neoliberal orthodoxy, defenders of the status quo wheel out the classic rhetoric of economic failure, foreign ideology, and associations with uncivilized non-European countries deploying anti-communism against even forces that stand far from any kind of Marxist politics.

The Italian governments decision has its origins back in 2018, when the Ponte Morandi a cement road bridge in the outskirts of Genoa collapsed, killing forty-three people. This tragedy sparked sharp debates on the apparent lack of maintenance of this bridge and of Italys road infrastructure in general. Especially targeted was the Benetton family, owners of the clothes firm and over the last two decades the majority stake in highway-management firm Autostrade per lItalia (ASPI).

Back then, Conte led a coalition uniting the populist Five Star Movement with the hard-right Lega, and the call to revoke the Benetton familys concession began to make headway. This was a major about-turn in a public debate dominated for over a quarter-century by talk of how the efficient private sector should replace all direct state management, driving a wave of privatizations unrivaled outside the old Eastern Bloc.

ASPI was created in 1950 as part of the Institute for Industrial Reconstruction (IRI, the then-vast public industrial holding company) and was a key force in the economic boom of the 1960s. Its building of one of the worlds densest highway networks fully suited a development model based on steel (public, at the time), oil (also in public hands) and cars (then, like now, under FIATs private quasi-monopoly).

The privatization of ASPI, along with IRI and many other public firms, came in the 1990s: the now-triumphant neoliberal ideology demanded this, but so, too, the binds established by the 1992 Maastricht Treaty, the founding act of the European Union, which among other things compelled Italy to slash its public debt through sell-offs of public assets. ASPI was privatized in 1999, and by 2002 the Benetton family had majority control. Since then, shareholders have drawn enormous profits, as road tolls have continually risen while investment in maintenance has been close to zero.

The highways themselves remained public property: what was privatized was their management, and the Ponte Morandi tragedy raised the possibility that the concession would be withdrawn. Yet it was unclear whether it would be entrusted to some other private owner, or if the state would directly take back control.

As this was still being debated, there came an unusual change of government. In summer 2019, Matteo Salvinis hard-right Lega split from its alliance with the Five Star Movement, which in turn formed a new coalition together with the center-left Democrats; despite this upheaval, the independent lawyer Giuseppe Conte remainedprime minister.

The Democrats had particular problems in countenancing nationalization. This party is, in fact, the heir to the political forces that led the privatizations of the 1990s, fully embodying the paradigm of progressive neoliberalism; it also has very close links with financial groups like the Benettons, considered leading lights of the enlightened, progressive-minded bourgeoisie notwithstanding their environmental and social violations in Latin America.

But the Democrats new leader Nicola Zingaretti was elected in 2019 on a platform, if not of Corbyn-style rupture, at least of partly walking back the Blairite infatuation of previous years. It would, indeed, have been odd for the theoretically most social-democratic of Italys main parties to be the only one opposed to revoking the concession.

Faced with a popular demand to do something to punish the Benettons considered indirectly responsible for the forty-three deaths if not nationalize the highways outright, the government was also trapped by its need not to appear overly anti-business, in an international context where it could imagine no economic strategy other than attracting private investment. Added complication came from the jungle of norms governing these outsourcing agreements.

Whatever the myth of the state-as-regulator of private business, these rules consistently favor the concession-owner stipulating billions of euros in fines for the state itself should it take the highways back from the privateer management.

The story came to a head on July 15 when the government and ASPI announced an agreement. State-owned financial holding company Cassa Depositi e Prestiti is to buy up 33 percent of the shares in ASPI (at a cost lower than any possible penalties) while another 22 percent will be ceded to institutional investors enjoying government confidence.

Then, the firm will be floated on the stock exchange and the Benettonss share will fall under 10 percent. This is far from a forced nationalization something the Italian constitution does, in fact, allow for but a market operation, contracted with the current owners, which will see the state intervene as a simple shareholder (if a major one) in a private firm.

But there is a clear shift: the state is to return as an economic actor, taking back part of what was privatized twenty years ago. If in 2018 the economist Mariana Mazzucato, theorist of a new state interventionism, wrote an article for leading daily La Repubblica (together with our comrade Simone Gasperin) entitled Highways: Nationalization Is No Taboo, today she is herself economic advisor to Prime Minister Conte.

The operation also bears the typical traits of this government and Contes own leadership, a balancing act between the progressive neoliberalism of the Italian center-left of the last twenty-five years and the need to give a different kind of response to a socio-economic situation in which such recipes have become unsustainable.

Contes government is not socialist and does not have any program of nationalizations. The agreement over the highways is fully internal to the mechanisms of a market economy. But the fact that, for the first time in decades, the Italian states role in a sector of the economy is growing rather than falling, certainly does point to a window of opportunity. This is a crack in the monolithic neoliberal consensus and the Left would do well to try and widen this crack further.

The day after the agreement, the specter of Bolivarianism made its terrifying appearance on the frontpages. Autostrade per lItalia a statization reminiscent of Venezuela claimed Lucio Malan of Berlusconis Forza Italia party in the Senate. Center-right MP Maurizio Lupi agreed, The expropriation of the Benettons is shocking, we arent Venezuela. The popular ultra-free-marketeer YouTuber Rick DuFer complained that Venezuela is near.

Such rhetoric also spread to the liberal press. If Italy becomes Venezuela, who will invest? asked former economy minister Giovanni Tria on Huffington Post Italia. Its editor Mattia Feltri added, this isnt the way a government resolves matters with private business except in Venezuela. One La Repubblica columnist found the comparison with Venezuela a little over-the-top but agreed with stigmatizing a certain drift toward neo-statism allitaliana. On July 20, Economy Minister Roberto Gualtieri was asked by a Corriere della Sera journalist, The government is displaying a dirigiste face, a little Venezuelan. Why would a foreign investor risk their capital in Italy?

There is another immediate reason for this sudden interest in Venezuela. In June, a few weeks before the ASPI agreement, the conservative Spanish daily newspaper ABC reported on alleged Venezuelan financing of the Five Star Movement (M5S), which backs Contes government.

The accusation was groundless but gained traction in the right-wing opposition, which habitually (and falsely) presents M5S as a radical-left force in a bid to erode its support among conservative parts of the electorate. Lega leader Salvini, himself in coalition with M5S just twelve months ago, claimed in June that the government now is a mix of the CGIL [trade union federation] and Venezuela.

Lets repeat: this was a part-nationalization, on market terms, carried out by a very moderate center-left government with both liberal and populist traits. The rhetorical move to associate this kind of policy with Venezuela is new to Italy, given how little there is in its politics of even vaguely socialist coloration.

Elsewhere this comparison is well-established, not least in the United States, where for years Venezuela has been presented as the archetype of the authoritarianism and economic collapse supposedly bound to result from socialist policies.

Even more so in Spain, whose media are much more assiduous in following Venezuelan events, and where Chavismo has often been at the center of public debate. Indeed, right-winger Jos Mara Aznars government was accused of supporting the 2002 coup attempt in Caracas by both the subsequent Socialist prime minister Jos Luis Rodrguez Zapatero and by Chvez himself.

Still legendary in Spanish politics is a 2007 incident where, faced with Chvezs continual interruptions of a speech by Zapatero at a summit in Chile (aiming precisely to launch attacks on Aznar), the then king of Spain Juan Carlos yelled at the Venezuelan president: Why dont you shut up?

The rise of Podemos in the 2010s then fueled the Spanish rights obsession with Venezuela, not least as party founders Pablo Iglesias and igo Errejn had experience as political consultants working for Latin American left-populist governments. For years, the Right has accused Podemos of being funded by Venezuelan petrodollars, albeit without finding any evidence.

But why Venezuela? If a good part of the radical left internationally condemned Juan Guaids coup attempt and imperialist interference in that country, Bolivarianism hardly enjoys the appeal it did fifteen years ago, when Chvez could boast of opening the way to the pink tide across Latin America. The impression is that this comparison with Venezuela is so successful because it responds to a well-established canon: Cold War anti-communism.

We speak of anti-communism all too little in the West, despite the formidable role of anti-Red propaganda across much of the world in the second half of the twentieth century. It was one of the weapons that devastated the US left, from McCarthyism onward: it has decided elections and deeply molded public debate in multiple countries. The presence, in Italy, of the Wests biggest Communist Party from 1943 to 1991 made it a rather different context compared with countries like Britain and (West) Germany, where anti-communism has devastated anything to the left of social democracy. But it made its mark in Italy, too.

Beyond the folklore of Don Camillo and Peppone (the village priest and the local communist, at the heart of a famous set of conservative films and books after 1945) Christian Democracys anti-communist rhetoric across its forty-year postwar hegemony has left deep traces. It is no accident that even after the Italian Communist Party dissolved in 1991 soon rallying behind moderate Catholic center-left leaders like Romano Prodi in the 1990s and 2000s, Berlusconi continually labeled all his adversaries communists, including the likes of Prodi.

This was a theme right from the moment the billionaire tycoon spectacularly announced that he was entering politics in 1994: the second line of his televised address declared that he had decided to enter the field and concern myself with public affairs, because I do not want to live in an illiberal country governed by immature forces and men double-bound to a politically and economically failed past.

In the attempt to delegitimize any vaguely progressive proposal any deviation from free-market orthodoxy the invocation of communist economic failure is a powerful weapon. So, not by accident, Venezuela comes into play. The point is not that Maduro really does represent a beacon for socialists internationally, but rather that the economic crisis that has struck that country will remind many Westerners of the stereotypes about scarcity in former Eastern Bloc countries. State intervention means communism, communism means poverty.

But the rhetoric about Venezuela doesnt only draw on the economic element of Cold War anti-communism. Also fundamental is the idea of foreign ties and even funding. The Moscow rubles that funded the Italian Communist Party and other Western parties are omnipresent in anti-communist stereotypes, and, behind this, the deeper idea of the communist as a traitor.

This draws on many antisemitic tropes, with which it is, indeed, often associated: communists, like Jews, are held to be more loyal to their international ties than their own country, to be at odds with the fatherland and thus a potential traitor. This guy isnt really one of us: hes paid from abroad, and the point of his radical ideas is to damage us.

In its Venezuelan versions, this rhetoric also draws on the anti-communist idea that communism is something unEuropean and essentially foreign often meaning, typical of non-white, uncivilized, colonized peoples, from the Chinese to the Vietnamese and Cubans, all so many Cossack barbarians readying to invade our civilized Europe. And its easy to identify the deep link between the pink tide in Latin America and the continents indigenous movements, even just looking at the personal biographies of many leading figures on the Left.

Not by chance, on February 28 at the peak of his primary run Bernie Sanders was himself attacked on similar grounds, as a violent column in the New York Times accused him of having been on the wrong side in the Cold War. This article had many disturbing traits, not least where it attacked Sanders on the grounds that The guy who was angry about the downfall of Salvador Allendes Marxist regime in Chile in 1973 is still angry about it today. The writer forgot to mention that this Marxist regime was a democratically elected government; its downfall, a fascist military coup.

In the Italian case, the sudden interest in Venezuelan matters thus seems to have very little to do with Maduros policies which, indeed, no one is indicating as a model to follow or as the leadership of an international socialist movement. Rather, it seems connected to deeper traits of the dominant culture in the liberal West. An established repertoire of anti-communist attacks can be called on to smear anyone who tries to question free-market orthodoxy, even as in the case of the Italian highways in the most ambiguous and timid forms.

The Cold War ended in 1989, but its cultural legacy is much more overbearing than we often imagine. And its clear that no one on the Left can hope to win broad support, without being prepared to confront this kind of rhetoric.

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How Partially Nationalizing the Highways Turned Italy Into Another Venezuela - Jacobin magazine

Unmasking The Realities Of Covid 19 – New Vision

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COVID-19 can be defeated, if we adhere to SOPs

As the situation worsens and deaths become overwhelming, family members may only be informed and attendance of burial is by one or two members of the family. I believe that is not what we want.

OPINIONHEALTH COVID-19

The coronavirus, first identified in China in December last year, has ravaged all countries of the world, causing socio-economic devastation in many countries. Within seven months, the death toll is close to 660,000 people and over 17,000,000 infections.

In March, President Yoweri Museveni instituted the first lockdown in Uganda after the first case was confirmed. The idea, at the time, was to assess where the cases are, trace contacts and identify possible alert cases.

Fortunately, there were no alerts, truck drivers from neighbouring countries were the main source, who initially were allowed to continue with their journey after extracting samples, only leaving behind their telephone contacts, to be contacted if their results turned out positive. They would then get admitted to the nearest designated hospital for treatment. President Museveni's position of ensuring that trucks continue despite the lockdown was a perfect position as Uganda had to continue to avoid economic collapse.

With truck drivers identified as the main source of the coronavirus, new measures allowed them to proceed after testing negative for COVID-19, a decision that has saved Uganda from a catastrophe.

The President has re-opened the economy except schools, gyms, borders, places of worship and large gatherings. Political activities are also up with national elections for February 2021. The reopening is a "new normal" that we should comprehend.

To avoid the coronavirus and avert the pandemic, the health ministry has issued standard operating procedures (SOPs) that include frequent washing of hands, social-distancing up to two metres and wearing of masks, if we are in public.

However, a good number of people are obstinate and ignore these guidelines. Some wear the mask like necklaces or simply cover the mouth. This is unfortunate. With 1,154 cases as of July 31, 123 active cases and two fatal alert cases, Ugandan health workers are doing extremely well, but the situation can get out of hand. If, out of nonadherence that happens, we must know the implications of the disease to the health infrastructure and to ourselves.

By not adhering to the SOPs, we endanger our health workers who are not replaceable on short notice. Training of doctors and nurses take years. Let us not endanger them through our reckless behaviour. The worst situation is community transmissions which gain momentum through a multiplier function where one positive person infects 10, each of the 10 also infect 10 and within one month, 10,000 cases can be registered, making contact tracing impossible.

This can overstretch hospitals and doctors earmarked for COVID-19 treatment. In Greater Kampala, (Kampala, Wakiso and Mukono districts), the treatment centres are Mulago and Nagulu hospitals, whereas Namboole stadium was mentioned as a possible treatment centre in case the situation gets worse.

If a person tests positive after being attended to at another hospital or clinic outside the designated ones, all health workers that interacted with that patient are taken into institutional quarantine to avoid transmitting it to patients and their families.

This can drastically reduce the number of health workers and may overwork those who remain. Remember that no foreign country offers help with doctors because they are also handling the situation in their own countries.

The existence of COVID-19 does not take away other diseases that have to continue to be treated. In such a situation, patients with sickness such as malaria or bacterial-induced sore throat infections may be chased away at other clinics to avoid contracting the virus.

With a huge increase in the virus infections and designated COVID-19 hospital beds get full, in-patient admissions start to replace those who have died, as intensive care beds or ventilators are not easily installed. Ventilators are operated 24 hours by trained medical personnel who also need years of training. Intensive care patients that survive take between five and 21 days before transfer to the general ward. Even if the Government was to put up another field hospital, there might be no health workers to deploy there.

The result, like in other countries, becomes home treatment where you keep health workers informed of your condition on phone and your own people start to distance themselves from you. Unavoidable delayed treatment may be dangerous because by the time the overstretched health workers reach you, the situation may not be reversible.

Out of obstinate, negligent or unfortunate behaviour, one may take COVID-19 home, infect their family or neighbours who are vulnerable like the diabetic, hypertensive, asthmatic, cancer and HIV patients. We must know that all ages are equally vulnerable. You cannot know who will survive or die. It could be you or your loved one, parents or the entire family.

Upon positive confirmation, one is taken to a designated health facility alone and your loved ones wait for updates from health workers. Do we ever imagine if the person taken to quarantine is your five-year-old child whom you cannot take care of as a parent?

As the situation worsens and deaths become overwhelming, family members may only be informed and attendance of burial is by one or two members of the family. I believe that is not what we want.

As President Museveni said right at the beginning, COVID-19 can be defeated, if we adhere to SOPs. We know how the disease is spread. The choice to avoid it. Take personal responsibility, wear the mask, stay safe.

The writer is the director of Confucius Institute and the head of Department of African Languages at Makerere University.

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Indeavor Launching New Technology to Combat Nuclear Fatigue – Business Wire

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MADISON, Wis.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--In response to plants feeling underserved by legacy software and vendors lacking up-to-date NRC fatigue expertise, Indeavor has released a new Fatigue Management module. Specifically made for the nuclear industry, this module allows power plants to operate efficiently while adhering to all complex NRC rules on managing personnel fatigue.

As the schedule automatically generates, Indeavors system helps plants ensure that regulations are never violated. With a single violation costing up to $303,471 per day, plants cannot afford to mismanage their employees schedules. Since the rules sets are configurable, we can easily adjust any necessary compliance measures if rules change, says Brandon Schwarz, the Chief Executive Officer of Indeavor. It was not long after we launched the module at two nuclear plants when the NRC made adjustments to their fatigue rules due to COVID-19. We were able to make the necessary changes to continue providing the compliance coverage they needed.

Indeavor is excited to form more partnerships in the nuclear space to help such a critical industry put their workers first with technology that can better protect them. Combatting fatigue by ensuring maximum work hour and minimum break rules are met will not only reduce the risk of fines and lawsuits, but also mitigate exposure to accidents and keep essential workers safe.

About Indeavor

Indeavors solution offers clients an end-to-end, cloud-based employee scheduling and absence management system. By integrating with your human capital management and enterprise resource planning systems, you can leverage a robust platform that provides you with real-time employee data. Relieve your supervisors of manual tasks and the constant mental fatigue brought upon by scheduling changes by automating the entire process, connecting the data to all of your existing corporate systems, and ensuring you always have the right qualified employee in each position.

For more information, visit http://www.indeavor.com.

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Mitek provides technology at no cost to Gift Card Bank to deliver donations to people in need during COVID-19 – GlobeNewswire

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SAN DIEGO, Aug. 04, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Mitek (NASDAQ: MITK,www.miteksystems.com), a global leader inmobile captureand identity verification software solutions, and Gift Card Bank, a nonprofit donating gift cards and financial support to those impacted by COVID-19, announced a new partnership to bring Miteks Mobile Verify technology to its donation platform. Mitek is providing its solution free of charge to help Gift Card Bank quickly and accurately verify the identities of individuals requesting support, protecting against potential fraud attempts by scammers who file fraudulent donation requests.

As of June 2020, Americans had filed more than 47 million jobless claims since the onset of the coronavirus. As these claims continue to grow, however, so do the number of scams related to relief funds with Americans reporting fraud losses of more than $93 million due to COVID-19 scams so far, according to the Federal Trade Commission.

In todays rapidly evolving digital economy, identity verification is critical to ensuring peoples online safety and security, said Max Carnecchia, CEO of Mitek. Were proud and grateful that our fraud prevention technology will help an innovative organization like Gift Card Bank deliver financial assistance to people who are hurting the most.

Founded in March 2020, Gift Card Bank collects gift card and cash donations, identifying families and individuals in need through foodbanks and fintech apps, and securely distributing the funds across a network that reaches more than 10 million low-income Americans. By integrating Miteks identity verification technology within the platform, users requesting donations simply upload a picture of their drivers license or other government-issued ID document and answer a few questions to quickly determine the authenticity of the user and their identity. Miteks technology is trusted by banks and major financial institutions around the world to safeguard against identity fraud and uses a combination of advanced analytics and biometric comparisons to detect even sophisticated fraud techniques such as deepfakes.

People across the country are being hit hard by COVID-19. By September this year, our goal is to be supporting more than 2,000 vulnerable Americans with more than $100,000 in donations but to do that, we needed partners who could help us identify those most in need and ensure aid goes to the right people, said Khalil Fuller, Founder of Gift Card Bank. Miteks identity verification technology was the obvious choice to ensure this happens. Miteks generosity also means that 100% of our donations go to those in need, not paying to manage our platforms technology.

For more information on Gift Card Banks mission or to make a tax-deductible cash or gift card donation, visit http://www.giftcardbank.org.

About MitekMitek (NASDAQ: MITK) is a global leader in mobile capture and digital identity verification built on the latest advancements in computer vision and artificial intelligence. Miteks identity verification solutions enable organizations to verify an individuals identity during digital transactions to reduce risk and meet regulatory requirements, while increasing revenue from digital channels. More than 7,000 organizations use Mitek to enable trust and convenience for mobile check deposit, new account opening and more. Mitek is based in San Diego, Calif., with offices across the U.S. and Europe. Learn more atwww.miteksystems.com.

About Gift Card BankGift Card Bank's mission is to improve wellbeing and financial security by supporting people through their time of greatest need. The Gift Card Bank platform is the first-ever fully compliant and scalable technology tool built specifically to provide gift cards for food and essential goods for low-income populations in the USA. Gift Card Bank partners with top-tier food banks, mission-aligned technology companies, and generous grocers, to alleviate hardship caused by COVID-19. Gift Card Bank is a fiscally sponsored project of Social Good Fund, a501(c)3 nonprofit. Learn more at http://www.giftcardbank.org

Mitek ContactAngela M. RomeiCorporate Communications Directorpr@miteksystems.com

Ed CruzLEWIS for MitekMitekUS@teamlewis.com

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AT&T to Webcast Talk with John Stephens at Oppenheimer Virtual Technology, Internet & Communications Conference on August 11 – Business Wire

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DALLAS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--AT&T Inc.* (NYSE:T) will webcast a presentation by John Stephens, AT&T Inc. senior executive vice president and chief financial officer, at the Oppenheimer Virtual Technology, Internet & Communications Conference on Tuesday, August 11, 2020. The presentation is scheduled to begin at 8 a.m. ET.

The webcast will be available live and for replay at AT&T Investor Relations. Viewers should start the webcast a few minutes before the planned start time in case the conference schedule changes.

*About AT&T

AT&T Inc. (NYSE:T) is a diversified, global leader in telecommunications, media and entertainment, and technology. WarnerMedia is a leading media and entertainment company that creates and distributes premium and popular content to global audiences through its consumer brands, including: HBO, HBO Max, Warner Bros., TNT, TBS, truTV, CNN, DC Entertainment, New Line, Cartoon Network, Adult Swim and Turner Classic Movies. Xandr, now part of WarnerMedia, provides marketers with innovative and relevant advertising solutions for consumers around premium video content and digital advertising through its platform. AT&T Communications provides more than 100 million U.S. consumers with entertainment and communications experiences across TV, mobile and broadband. Plus, it serves high-speed, highly secure connectivity and smart solutions to nearly 3 million business customers. AT&T Latin America provides pay-TV services across 10 countries and territories in Latin America and the Caribbean and wireless services to consumers and businesses in Mexico.

AT&T products and services are provided or offered by subsidiaries and affiliates of AT&T Inc. under the AT&T brand and not by AT&T Inc. Additional information is available at about.att.com. 2020 AT&T Intellectual Property. All rights reserved. AT&T, the Globe logo and other marks are trademarks and service marks of AT&T Intellectual Property and/or AT&T affiliated companies. All other marks contained herein are the property of their respective owners.

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Former Overwatch Pro Silkthread Reveals Blizzard Tried To Fine Him $1000 For Pepe The Frog Tweet – Bounding Into Comics

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Former Overwatch pro Silkthread recently recounted how he was fined $1000 dollars by Blizzard for a tweet concerning Pepe the Frog.

On a July 23rd Twitch stream, Silkthread, whose name is Ted Wang, shared the original email he received when the incident took place in 2018.

The email details that during season one of the league, Silkthread tweeted, Does anyone else love Pepe the frog?

Related: Overwatch League Analyst MonteCristo Insinuates Riot Games New Fist Bump Logo is Sexist

It provoked a response shortly after. The social media manager for the Los Angeles Valiant, Wangs Overwatch team, demanded he delete the tweet immediately.

Wang did delete the tweet, but not before the eyes of the Overwatch League caught it. He was fined $1,000 dollars for the post.

The email he received from the Overwatch League began, This behavior is unacceptable. Your comments violate the spirit of diversity and inclusiveness that makes Overwatch great.

It continued, Comments like yours will not be tolerated by anyone associated with the Overwatch League. Your conduct also violates the letter and spirit of the Overwatch Leagues Official Rules and your Overwatch League Player Professional Services Agreement.

The email then informed him he was being fined $1000, Accordingly, the League Office has determined to impose a $1,000 fine for posting support for a racist meme.

Related: Overwatch League Players Fined $1000 Each for Inappropriate Chat During a League Match

Your Team will be directed to withhold the amount of your fine from your salary until fully paid. This discipline is without prejudice to any other discipline or remedies that the Team may have as your employer, the email stated.

He was able to appeal the fine, citing that he was unaware of the cartoon frog being interpreted as a hate symbol.

According to Wang, he even paid a $60 Uber to go to Burbank just to dispute the fine.

He explained, If you guys want to know what happened, I ended up paying like a $60 Uber to get to Burbank and I disputed the fine. And the dispute worked and I didnt get fined. And thats the story guys.

After telling viewers the interesting anecdote, Silkthread would have a moment of hindsight.

Related: Blizzard Removes McCrees Noose Spray in Latest Overwatch Update

Thinking back, it probably would have been smarter to take the fine, he said. It would be pretty f***ing cool to be legacized as the person that got fined for tweeting about Pepe the Frog. That would be pretty epic.

Its unclear if this rule is still in effect. Back in March 2018, an Overwatch League spokesperson told Dot Esports, The Overwatch League discourages the use of symbols and imagery which are associated with or used by hate groups, including Pepe the Frog.

They added, At Blizzard Arena, its our policy that fans comply with this policy. We likewise ask the same of Overwatch League teams and players on their social-media accounts.

At the time a number of players deleted their Pepe the Frog memes that they had posted to Twitter.

Jay sinatraa Won indicated he deleted a Pepe the Frog birthday meme.

Esports reporter Rod Breslau reported New York Excelsior DPS Kim Pine Do-hyeon deleted a photo of his phone case that featured Pepe the Frog.

Related: Report: Blizzard Forbids Okay Symbol in Overwatch League Arena Claims Its a White Power Symbol

Its unclear if the Pepe the Frog ban is still in effect. Dallas Fuel player Dylan akm Bignet did post a Pepe the Frog birthday meme back in December.

Related: TheScore Esports Daniel Rosen Applauds Blizzards Reported Decision to Ban Okay Sign in Overwatch League Arena

While its unclear what Blizzard and the Overwatch Leagues current policy on Pepe the Frog is, they did begin enforcing a ban on using the okay symbol last year.

What do you make of the Overwatch League trying to fine Silkthread for a Pepe the Frog meme?

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Former Overwatch Pro Silkthread Reveals Blizzard Tried To Fine Him $1000 For Pepe The Frog Tweet - Bounding Into Comics

What Would Happen if You Fell Into a Black Hole? – Discover Magazine

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Sorry, science fiction fans. You cant actually survive a trip through a black hole. And if you tried to take a plunge into one, like Matthew McConaughey in the movie Interstellar, youd be ripped apart long before you could find out whats on the other side.

To fully appreciate why you cant just swan dive or pilot your spaceship into a black hole, you must first understand the basic properties of these gravitational goliaths. Simply put, a black hole is a place where gravity is so strong that no light or anything else, for that matter can escape.

Black holes are aptly named because they usually don't reflect or emit light. Theyre only visible when theyre feeding on stars or gas clouds that stray too close to their boundary, called the event horizon. Beyond the event horizon lies a truly minuscule point called a singularity, where gravity is so intense that it infinitely curves space-time itself. This is where the laws of physics, as we know them, break down, meaning all theories about what lies beyond are just speculation.

Black holes seem exotic to most of us, but theyre commonplace to scientists. Physicists had toyed with theories about similar objects for decades before Albert Einsteins general relativity predicted their existence. However, the concept wasnt really taken seriously until the 1960s, when extremely compact stars were discovered. Today, black holes are considered an ordinary part of stellar evolution, and astronomers suspect our Milky Way galaxy holds millions of them alone.

Black holes come in different varieties and can be modeled with different levels of complexity, like whether or not they spin or have an electrical charge. So if you jumped into one, your exact fate might depend on which sort of black hole you choose.

At the simplest level, there are three kinds of black holes: stellar-mass black holes, supermassive black holes and intermediate-mass black holes.

Stellar-mass black holes form when very large stars finish burning their fuel and collapse into themselves. Supermassive black holes live in the centers of most galaxies, and likely grow to their extreme sizes up to tens of billions of times more massive than our sun by consuming stars and merging with other black holes. Intermediate-mass black holes are still mysterious, and only a few suspected examples have been discovered, but astronomers think they may form through a similar process of accretion, just on a smaller scale.

Stellar-mass black holes may be puny in comparison to their bigger cousins, but they actually boast more extreme tidal forces just beyond their event horizons. This difference occurs thanks to a property of black holes that would likely surprise some casual observers. Smaller black holes actually have a more dramatic gravitational gradient than supermassive ones. In other words, you only have to fall a very short distance to experience an extremely noticeable difference in gravity.

If you were free-floating in space near a stellar-mass black hole that wasnt feeding on anything, your only hint that it exists might be the gravitational magnification, or lensing, effect it could have on background stars.

But as you flew closer to this strange spot, youd be stretched in some directions and squished in others, a process that scientists call spaghettification. This is because the black hole's gravity compresses your body horizontally while pulling it like taffy in the vertical direction. If you jumped into the black hole feet first, the gravitational force on your toes would be much stronger than that pulling on your head. Each bit of your body would also be elongated in a slightly different direction. You would literally end up looking like a piece of spaghetti.

So, as you fell into a stellar-mass black hole, you probably wouldnt worry much about the existential mysteries you might be able to unlock on "the other side." Youd be as dead as spaghetti-shaped doornail hundreds of miles before you hit the singularity.

And this scenario isn't entirely based on theory and speculation, either. Astronomers witnessed such a tidal disruption event back in 2014, when several space telescopes caught a star wander too close to a black hole. The star was stretched out and shredded, causing some of the material to fall beyond the event horizon, while the rest was flung back out into space.

In contrast to falling into a stellar-mass black hole, your experience plunging into a supermassive or intermediate-mass black hole would be slightly less nightmarish. Though the end result, a horrible death, would still be your fate, you might actually make it all the way to the event horizon and manage to start falling inside the singularity while still alive.

In this case, at least in theory, you could see out into surrounding space. But no one would be able to see you once you passed beyond the event horizon. Even if you were holding a flashlight and tried to shine it out, the light would fall back down into the singularity with you.

Meanwhile, you'd see that everything within the event horizon was warped by extreme gravitational forces, thanks to an effect astronomers call gravitational lensing. (Not to mention the wild time dilation effects.)

Of course, no matter what type of black hole you fall into, you're ultimately going to get torn apart by the extreme gravity. No material, especially fleshy human bodies, could survive intact. So once you pass beyond the edge of the event horizon, youre done. Theres no getting out. Even if you were still alive, youd have to travel faster than the speed of light in order to escape. But as we know, nothing in the known universe can do that.

But don't fret just yet; the closest known black hole to Earth is still a daunting 1,000 light-years away. However, astronomers suspect there are many more lurking much closer, perhaps as little as a few dozen light-years from Earth. In fact, some researchers think the distant solar system's hypothetical Planet Nine is actually a primordial black hole that's roughly the size of a baseball.

With that in mind, it's possible (albeit unlikely) that if humans survive long enough to pioneer advanced space travel technology, we might be able to visit a black hole up close. And if we do, maybe we'll even toss a few probes into the black hole to test what happens at the event horizon.

Unfortunately, because nothing can escape the event horizon, not even information, well never be able to know for certain what goes on when matter reaches the point of no return. So, even if you do find yourself with the opportunity to take a cosmic cliff dive into a black hole, for safety reasons, you probably should resist the urge.

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What Would Happen if You Fell Into a Black Hole? - Discover Magazine

A Year After Gene Therapy, Boys With Muscular Dystrophy Are Healthier and Stronger – Singularity Hub

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Two and a half years ago, a study published in Science Advances detailed how the gene editing tool CRISPR/Cas-9 repaired genetic mutations related to Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD). The study was a proof of concept, and used induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs).

But now a similar treatment has not only been administered to real people, it has worked and made a difference in their quality of life and the progression of their disorder. Nine boys aged 6 to 12 who have been living with DMD since birth received a gene therapy treatment from pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, and a year later, 7 of the boys show significant improvement in muscle strength and function.

Though the treatments positive results are limited to a small group, theyre an important breakthrough for gene therapy, and encouraging not just for muscular dystrophy but for many other genetic diseases that could soon see similar treatments developed.

DMD is a genetic disorder that causes muscles to progressively degenerate and weaken. Its caused by mutations in the gene that makes dystrophin, a protein that serves to rebuild and strengthen muscle fibers in skeletal and cardiac muscles. As the gene is carried on the X chromosome, the disorder primarily affects boys. Many people with DMD end up in wheelchairs, on respirators, or both, and while advances in cardiac and respiratory care have increased life expectancy into the early 30s, theres no cure for the condition.

The gene therapy given to the nine boys by Pfizer was actually developed by a research team at the UNC Chapel Hill School of Medicineand it took over 30 years.

The team was led by Jude Samulski, a longtime gene therapy researcher and professor of pharmacology at UNC. As a grad student in 1984, Samulski was part of the first team to clone an adeno-associated virus, which ended up becoming a leading method of gene delivery and thus crucial to gene therapy.

Adeno-associated viruses (AAVs) are small viruses whose genome is made up of single-stranded DNA. Like other viruses, AAVs can break through cells outer membranesespecially eye and muscle cellsget inside, and infect them (and their human hosts). But AAVs are non-pathogenic, meaning they dont cause disease or harm; the bodies of most people treated with AAVs dont launch an immune response, because their systems detect that the virus is harmless.

Samulskis gene therapy treatment for DMD used an adeno-associated virus to carry a healthy copy of the dystrophin gene; the virus was injected into boys with DMD, broke into their muscle cells, and replaced their non-working gene.

Samulski said of the adeno-associated virus, Its a molecular FedEx truck. It carries a genetic payload and its delivering it to its target. The company Samulski founded sold the DMD treatment to Pfizer in 2016 so as to scale it and make it accessible to more boys suffering from the condition.

A year after receiving the gene therapy, seven of nine boys are showing positive results. As reported by NPR, the first boy to be treated, a nine-year old from Connecticut, saw results that were not only dramatic, but fast. Before treatment he couldnt walk up more than four stairs without needing to stop, but within three weeks of treatment he was able to run up the full flight of stairs. I can run faster. I stand better. And I can walk [] more than two miles and I couldnt do that before, he said.

The muscle cells already lost to DMD wont grow back, but the treatment appears to have restored normal function of the protein that fixes muscle fibers and helps them grow, meaning no further degeneration should take place.

Gene therapy trials are underway for several different genetic diseases, including sickle cell anemia, at least two different forms of inherited blindness, and Alzheimers, among others. Its even been used as part of cancer treatment.

Its only been a year, we dont yet know whether these treatments may have some sort of detrimental effect in the longer term, and the treatment itself can still be improved. But all of that considered, signs point to the DMD treatment being a big win for gene therapy.

Before it can be hailed as a resounding success, though, scientists feel that a more extensive trial of the therapy is needed, and are working to launch such a trial later this year.

Image Credit: pixelRaw from Pixabay

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Elon Musk’s Mysterious Neuralink Chip Could Make You Hear Things That Were Impossible to Hear Before – Tech Times

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The mysterious Neuralink chip was previously in the headlines when the founder of the company, Elon Musk, said that the chip will be able tostream musicstraight into the wearer's brain--and now, the tech CEO has revealed more details about it.

(Photo : Hannibal Hanschke/REUTERS)Elon Musk shared new detail about the mysterious Neuralink chip.

Hear Beyond Frequencies and Amplitudes

In a report by Independent, Musk revealed that the chip will allow the wearer to hear things that they weren't able to hear before as it was out of a human's hearing range, meaning the Neuralink chip can be used to "extend range of hearing beyond normal frequencies and amplitudes."

Additionally, and perhaps even more interesting and exciting, is that the mysterious chip will apparently be able to help restore movement for people with a fully severed spinal cord.

If that proves to be true, it could help millions of people who have had spinal injuries and were unable to move since then, providing the best and perhaps the only cure available on the market.

Read Also: iPhones Can Soon Process Credit Card Payments With a Simple Tap as Apple Acquires Mobeewave for $100M

How will the Neuralink Chip Work?

But what is this Neuralink chip, exactly?

Elon Musk founded the company back in 2016, but until now, the CEO has only made one major presentation about how the technology they are developing will work.

Ultimately, the company's goal is to create a direct link between the brain and a computer.

They will be able to do this by using a "sewing machine-like" device that will "sew" threads to the implanted brain chip, which would then connect to a single USB-C cable that enables "full-bandwidth data streaming" to the brain.

This is based on the research paper that the company's scientists have published last year.

Furthermore, the company's CEO plans to enhance the chip's capabilities and allow mankind to compete with artificial intelligence.

Nevertheless, their first iterations of the Neuralink chip is to help people with neurological issues and brain disorders like Parkinson's and depression and anxiety.

As of now, Musk has only been sharing snippets of the Neuralink chip's prowess through a series of tweet, but he is planning on holding an event on August 28 that will hopefully talk more about the mysterious chip and will finally provide the public with more information on its features and the technology behind it.

The Goal to Overcome AI

Besides the chip's capability to stream music straight to our brain, it apparently could help regulate hormone levels of the wearer and provide "enhanced abilities," such as relief from anxiety and greater reasoning skills.

Through the mysterious chip, Musk believes humanity could overcome AI.

He had always been vocal about his fear that humanity could be wiped out or overcome by artificial intelligence in a theory known as the Singularity.

In an interview with theNew York Times, Musk predicted that AI could overtake humans in the next five years based on the current trends, but he also said that it "doesn't mean that everything goes to hell in five years. It just means that things get unstable or weird.

"My assessment about why AI is overlooked by very smart people is that very smart people do not think a computer can ever be as smart as they are," he said. "And this is hubris and obviously false. We are headed toward a situation where AI is vastly smarter than humans and I think that time frame is less than five years from now."

Read Also: China Reportedly Weighing Antitrust Probe Into WeChat Pay and Alipay

This article is owned by TechTimes.

Written by: Nhx Tingson

2018 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.

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Darren Criss, John Boyega star in scripted podcast ”There Be Monsters” – Outlook India

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Los Angeles, Aug 4 (PTI) Hollywood stars Darren Criss and John Boyega are set to feature in sci-fi thriller podcast "There Be Monsters".

According to Deadline, the podcast hails from iHeartRadio, FlynnPictureCo, Psychopia Pictures and UpperRoom Productions.

The 10-part narrative series is about Jack Locke (Boyega), a mysterious hero with a vendetta who infiltrates a Silicon Valley body hacking startup run by an enigmatic CEO Max Fuller (Criss), whose highly secretive creations promise to enhance human biology in incredible ways.

"There Be Monsters" is produced byBeau Flynnof FlynnPictureCo,Dan Bushof Psychopia Pictures and Boyega''s UpperRoom Productions.

It will be available on iHeartPodcast Network later this year.

Boyega, best known for his role of Finn in the "Star Wars" franchise", will next star in drama "Naked Singularity", alongside Olivia Cooke, Bill Skarsgard, Ed Skrein, Linda Lavin and Tim Blake Nelson.

Criss most recently starred in Ryan Murphy''s Netflix series "Hollywood" and war drama "Midway". PTI RB RB

Disclaimer :- This story has not been edited by Outlook staff and is auto-generated from news agency feeds. Source: PTI

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Iron Man Just Revealed His Most Advanced Armor EVER | Screen Rant – Screen Rant

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Iron Man has finally returned to Marvel's Universe in the flesh. But a new body needs a new suit of armor - his most advanced ever created.

Warning: Spoilers for Iron Man 2020 #5.

Tony Stark just gave himself his most advanced Iron Mansuit upgrade to date, surpassing any other mark he has created. Taking a page out of the DC hero Green Lantern's book,it is only limited by his imagination. And with a genius intellect like Tony's, the suit's power truly is limitless.

As comic fans know, Tony Stark is constantlyimproving on previous designs, building a lineage starting with the original Mark 1 armor, and leading to the modern dayGodbuster armor designbuilt and worn within the virtual eScape.But after a showdown with his A.I.-hating brother Arno Stark left Tony dead, he is elevating his game... by becoming his own living experiment as an A.I. construct of Tony Stark in an artificial body. Now, he's back to finish the fight with a suit of armor most fans couldn't even imagine.

Related:Iron Man-Thing is Officially Marvel's Grossest Hero

On the digital '13th floor' where Tony has been leading his robotic uprising against Arno, the former Iron Man has been busy. After Tony's trusty A.I. Friday convinced him that he truly is the original Stark, and not merely a simulation,Tony has prepared for the final battle against his brother Arno. With the help of his friends (human and A.I. alike), those loyal to Tony grew a new body replacing artificial cells with his actual DNA, making this the real deal. Meanwhile, Tonyand Friday have constructed a new armor within the virtual world. As he transfers his new consciousness to the body, Tony is already bragging about the genius of his new armor... while those looking onmerely see the man.

An overconfident Arno sees Tony approaching and unleashes an onslaught of firepower, holding nothing back just because his brother "forgot his suit at home." But that's exactly what Tony has planned--and the exact moment he chooses toreveal the genius of his new suit. Even when Tony creates the most cutting-edge armor upgrades, he knows they are obsolete even before he is finishes building them. So to solve the problem, Tony's new armor is truly the next stage in evolution of Iron Man armor. With no physical fabrication to rely on, the new limit is merely the imagination of the man inside the suit.

Unfortunately, as Tony lays the beatdown on Arno to prove his suit's superiority, they are interrupted by the approaching catalyst event that Arno has foolishly been preparing for: The Singularity, which wants to consume all technology and organics and combine them into one being. Time is up, and readers can only guess how Arno and Tony will be able to team up against this threat. With his powerful new suit, hopefully Tony can be creative enough to defeat the Singularity. There's no tellingwhat is next for Iron Man now that he is back, but here's hoping his new suit sticks around for a while.

Iron Man 2020 #5 is available now at your local comic book store, or direct from Marvel Comics.

Next:Every Iron Man Replacement Marvel Has Already Introduced

Black Panther is Officially The Most Dangerous Man Alive

Kirk Smith: Accountant from 9 5 and full out comic book nerd on evening and weekends.By gifting him an issue of the Amazing Spider-Man #408, Kirks grandfather introduced him to the world of comics at the tender age of eight. The striking cover of Spider-Man laying in pure white snow is still a fond memory today. Perhaps living in the frozen tundra, better known as the Canadian prairies, has something to do with the lasting impression the issue made on him. Kirks wife even let him frame this issue and hang it up in their basement.From that point on, Kirk fell deep into the world of Marvel comics and became completely obsessed with anything and everything related to comics. So much so that he even had aspirations to become an illustrator and artist like his grandfather, and the analytical side of his brain eventually lead him to the thrilling world of accounting.As self professed Marvel fanboy who continues to try and break into the wonderful world of DC, Kirk is fascinated by the art and storytelling of any and all comics. He is simply fascinated with the world of comics and everything that has subsequently been developed from it, from television series to blockbuster movies, he loves it all, even all the action figures that come along with it. He cannot believe his boyhood obsession has broken into mainstream media, and he can finally share his love of Spider-Man instead of his respect for bookkeeping.

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Iron Man Just Revealed His Most Advanced Armor EVER | Screen Rant - Screen Rant

US offshore energy industry releases economic impact study of offshore wind auctions – WorldOil

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8/4/2020

WASHINGTON - The United States has an opportunity to accelerate offshore wind energy growth, and benefit from 28 new gigawatts of clean energy and $1.7 billion in U.S. Treasury revenue by 2022, a new study released today from research group Wood Mackenzie finds.

Findings from this study confirm additional lease areas are needed to meet demand, reduce energy costs, increase competition, and ultimately generate thousands of jobs and billions in investment. Additionally, the findings offer guidance to decision-makers about new offshore wind leases, which can be a short-term solution to jump start recovery from a coronavirus pandemic-driven economic slowdown.

Commissioned by four energy industry groups, American Wind Energy Association (AWEA), National Ocean Industries Association (NOIA), New York Offshore Wind Alliance (NYOWA), and the Special Initiative on Offshore Wind (SIOW) at the University of Delaware, the study dives into the economic impact of offshore wind activities as a result of potential Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) lease auctions in 2020, 2021 and 2022. Based on existing activities and policy assumptions for future offshore wind development, two million acres of federal waters in the New York Bight, which includes parts of New Jersey, as well as California and the Carolinas, could be auctioned for commercial leases as early as this year as well as in 2021. Such leasing could support 28 GW of offshore wind development and generate $1.2 billion in U.S. Treasury revenue. Other auctions for lease areas in the Gulf of Maine and areas in California could happen in 2022 and would generate an additional $500 million in U.S. Treasury revenue.

Significant capital investment will be put into the U.S. economy to support offshore wind activities. Total investment in the U.S. offshore wind industry will be $17 billion by 2025, $108 billion by 2030 and $166 billion by 2035. From 2022 to 2035, capital investment of $42 billion will go to turbine manufacturers and the supply chain, $107 billion will go to the construction industry, and $8 billion will go to the transportation industry and ports. Annual capital investment for O&M activities will increase to $2.4 billion in 2035.

In addition to delivering clean energy to millions of households, the offshore wind industry will also contribute a variety of economic benefits to the U.S. economy, including supporting tens of thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in capital investment. If the assumed BOEM auctions in 2021 and 2022 happen, total full time equivalent (FTE) job creation from the resulting offshore wind activities, including development, construction and operation will be approximately 80,000 jobs annually from 2025 to 2035.

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US offshore energy industry releases economic impact study of offshore wind auctions - WorldOil

Amendment requiring 6000 MW of offshore wind by 2035 clears Senate – Wicked Local Bridgewater

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TuesdayAug4,2020at4:34PMAug4,2020at4:34PM

Dean of the Massachusetts Senate Marc R. Pacheco, D-Taunton, filed an amendment unanimously passed by the Massachusetts State Senate July 29 requiring a total solicitation of 6000 MW of Offshore Wind by 2035.

Offshore Wind is a critical source of renewable energy and a major piece to the foundation of our clean energy future here in the Commonwealth, said Pacheco, founding chair of the Senate Committee on Global Warming and Climate Change. According to recent estimates, Vineyard Wind and Mayflower Wind together offer approximately $2.5 billion in direct savings for Massachusetts ratepayers, over 9,000 new local jobs and the elimination of approximately 3.3 million metric tons of CO2 annually the equivalent of taking 675,000 cars off the road. I am extremely pleased to have secured the passage of this offshore wind amendment that will create new jobs, improve our public health with cleaner air, and help drive down greenhouse gas emissions.

The commonwealth currently has authorization to procure a total of 3200 MW of offshore wind under existing law, but the two 800MW projects by Vineyard Wind and Mayflower Wind already under agreement account for half of that capacity. Although Massachusetts was an early leader among the states to solicit offshore wind, New York, New Jersey and other states on the Atlantic coast have begun to contend for their own share of the offshore wind marketplace.

Amendment 139 of An Act enabling partnerships for growth sponsored by Pacheco, Offshore Wind Development, would upgrade the states procurement limit by requiring the solicitation of a total of 6000 MW of offshore wind by 2035, raising the existing level an additional 2800 MW.

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Amendment requiring 6000 MW of offshore wind by 2035 clears Senate - Wicked Local Bridgewater

Indonesia: COVID-19 – New Presidential Regulation Disbands the Offshore Loan Coordination Team (PKLN) – Lexology

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In brief

Disbanding of the Offshore Loan Coordination Team (PKLN)

On 20 July, the government issued Presidential Regulation No. 82 of 2020 on the Handling Committee for Corona Virus Disease (COVID-19) and the Recovery of the National Economy ("PR 82"). Under PR 82, the government officially disbanded several government institutions, one of which is the Offshore Loan Coordination Team ("PKLN Team"). The PKLN Team was formed under Presidential Decree No. 39 of 1991 on Coordination of the Management of Offshore Loans ("PD 39").

The functions of the PKLN Team include coordinating the management of offshore loans of the government, state-owned enterprises and private companies, and determining the priority of offshore loans for development projects. In carrying out its functions, the PKLN Team (i) received periodical reports of offshore loans and (ii) provided approval to, among others, offshore loans related to government projects or provided to state-owned entities.

We understand that the functions of the government institutions that are disbanded under the regulation will be transferred to the relevant government bodies or ministries. PR 82 stipulates that the functions of the PKLN Team will be transferred to the Ministry of Finance ("MOF").

PR 82 also revokes PD 39 but it does not revoke Presidential Decree No. 59 of 1972 on Obtaining Offshore Loans (PD 59). Under PD 59 (i) offshore loans obtained by state- or regional-owned entities need prior approval from the MOF and (ii) offshore loans need to be reported periodically to the MOF.

Key takeaways

Since PD 39 has been revoked and the PKLN Team disbanded, it is possible that the MOF will enhance its role as stipulated in PD 59 to issue approvals for certain offshore loans and receive reports on offshore loans. It is unclear whether or not the MOF will conduct its functions using PD 59 (and its implementing regulations) as a guideline, or issue new implementing regulations to align the procedure in PD 59 with the current market conditions. We will provide further updates once there is an implementing regulation, socialization or further development of this regulation.

PR 82 was issued to deal with the impacts of COVID-19 in Indonesia and the recovery of the national economy by forming new task forces and committees such as (i) the Policy Committee, (ii) the COVID-19 Task Force and (iii) the Recovery and Transformation of the National Economy Task Force.

PR 82 also disbands several government institutions and revokes several regulations related to those institutions because (i) the duties and functions of those government institutions may overlap with the duties and functions of other government institutions, or (ii) because the functions of those institutions can be more efficiently performed by other government institutions. The disbanding of some government institutions and the revocation of several regulations by PR 82 would also help the government to reduce the state budget expenditure.

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Indonesia: COVID-19 - New Presidential Regulation Disbands the Offshore Loan Coordination Team (PKLN) - Lexology

German Offshore Wind to Hydrogen Project Takes Off – Offshore WIND

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rsted and its partners have secured funding for the Westkste 100 renewable hydrogen project in Germany.

The partners received funding confirmation from the German Federal Ministry of Economic Affairs and Energy as the first large-scale hydrogen project in Germany within the Reallabor (real-world laboratory) framework.

The Westkste 100 project aims to research and develop an approach to produce green hydrogen from offshore wind energy and to use the resulting waste heat and oxygen. The purpose of the project is to make industrial processes, aviation, construction, and heating more sustainable in the future.

Westkste 100 is our third hydrogen project and the first one in Germany found eligible for public funding, and were very excited about the prospects of supporting heavy industries and heavy transport with clean alternatives based on renewable hydrogen, Martin Neubert, Executive Vice President and CEO, rsted Offshore, said.

The project has a total budget of EUR 89 million. The approved funding for the project, starting on 1 August 2020, amounts to EUR 30 million.

A total of ten partners have joined forces to form the consortium: EDF Germany, Holcim Germany, OGE, rsted, Raffinerie Heide, Stadtwerke Heide, Thga, and thyssenkrupp Industrial Solutions, together with the Region Heide Development Agency and the Fachhochschule Westkste (West Coast University of Applied Sciences).

This project is unique because it uses offshore wind power for large-scale hydrogen production. Only offshore wind can provide such a reliable renewable source of green power for the electrolysis, Volker Malmen, Managing Director, rsted in Germany, said.

This requires that the expansion of renewables and offshore wind power is balanced with the increased demand for hydrogen production. We believe that renewable hydrogen is key to decarbonize industrial sectors. The Westkste 100 project is a cornerstone in our efforts to lead the way in renewable hydrogen as we are doing in offshore wind, to create a world that runs entirely on green energy.

Phase 1 Can Now Start

With the grant approval from the German Federal Ministry of Economic Affairs and Energy, the Westkste 100 project can now enter its first phase which includes a number of elements.

A newly founded joint venture, H2 Westkste GmbH, consisting of EDF Germany, rsted, and the Heide refinery, intends to build a 30-megawatt electrolyser.

This can produce green hydrogen from offshore wind energy and provide information on the operation, maintenance, control, and grid services of the plant.

Furthermore, pipeline transportation of hydrogen and the use of hydrogen in existing and new infrastructure around Heide will be tested.

The consortium will also initiate the work to develop the vision of a large-scale sector coupling including a 700 MW electrolyser system into a concrete project. This will require a significant R&D and engineering effort, the partners said.

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Digital projects to reduce costs and offshore manning levels are progressing – News for the Oil and Gas Sector – Energy Voice

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Despite its rich heritage of engineering ingenuity and entrepreneurial spirit, the oil and gas industry has been traditionally slow to adopt new technology. However, following the protracted downturn in recent years, this changed dramatically with companies much more open to collaborate on new technology and keen to embrace digital innovation in a bid to reduce costs and deliver ever-greater efficiencies.

The drive towards the energy transition and the quest to achieve net-zero operations has fuelled this renewed appetite for digital and data-driven applications. Moreover, the coronavirus-imposed lockdown has forced the whole industry to work remotely, further accelerating the use of data-driven, digital platforms and solutions.

This fast-changing landscape is providing fertile ground for Scotlands data and AI innovation centre, The Data Lab. With a mission to help Scotland maximise value from data, we are on-hand to help the energy industry innovate through data.

Every organisation generates and gathers data; its what you do with it that can be truly transformational. Collaboration is the most effective way to break new ground using data science. But applying data science to solve energy-related solutions can be challenging. Working collaboratively with energy companies, we can provide the cutting-edge skills and in-depth knowledge to make the most of their data. Leveraging our network, we can match businesses with the right academic or specialist partners to deliver multi-party collaborations, to scope and manage a specific project, wherever a company is in its data journey, and to help access external sources of funding.

There are some great examples of project-specific data projects in the energy industry, whether its virtual inspections or detecting equipment malfunctions through to using data to drive efficiencies in bed-space offshore. However, the business transformation models which can be achieved across an entire organisation with a joined-up approach, rather than just a project by project basis, have yet to be fully realised. And this is where The Data Lab can come in. We can work with energy companies on two levels: firstly through our leadership training which equips leaders with the skills they need to devise a data strategy and secondly through our new advisory business service, TORCH, to then accelerate data-driven innovation and change.

With many new data science technologies less than five years old, companies are often unaware of the latest trends and developments. Our leadership training interactive workshops take people beyond the hype surrounding data and AI and demonstrate how companies can drive real value across their business through better use of data. Armed with this know-how, business leaders can then develop and de-risk data strategies which are wholly applicable to their own business.

TORCH enables those who have developed a data strategy to overcome the challenges faced when embarking upon new data projects. By investing effort into the early stages of a data project, the quality of the outcomes can be improved, and risks reduced, of particular importance in the later and more expensive phases of any data journey.

Navigating the complex data technology and services marketplace can be confusing and time-consuming. In response to this, our experts support clients by acting as a critical, unbiased friend, partnering organisations with a network of Scottish-based companies that have proven expertise in delivering solutions.

It was recently reported that dozens of projects run by the Oil and Gas Technology Centre (OGTC) are facing delays or cancellation due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Nearly half of the 150 live schemes underway from the Aberdeen technology accelerator have been affected by the virus, as operators who help test them defer non-essential spending. Those focussed on exploration and helping to produce more oil and gas, particularly those requiring offshore trials, have been hit hardest. However, digital projects like robotics, wearable technology, and predictive modelling, helping to reduce costs and offshore manning levels, are still progressing. The Data Lab is keen to support companies in taking these types of projects forward, whatever their size and wherever they are on their data journey

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Digital projects to reduce costs and offshore manning levels are progressing - News for the Oil and Gas Sector - Energy Voice